The Impact Of Insurgency On Nigerian Economy (Postgraduate project material)

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The Impact Of Insurgency On Nigerian Economy (Postgraduate project material)

ABSTRACT

This study is on the appraisal of the Impact of insurgency on nation’s economy growth: A case study of Kaduna metropolis. The analysis involved the definition of research objectives, research questions and hypothesis. A field survey of two hundred (270) respondents was carried out. The findings revealed that’ “there is no significant relationship between security and economic growth”. Thus, it concluded that fighting insurgency should be the number one goal of governments in Nigeria at all levels as the country cannot achieve any significant development amidst insecurity and violence. It however recommends the formulation of an effective policies and programmes capable of addressing the root causes of insecurity in Nigeria.

 Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.0Background to the Study

1.1Background to the Study

1.2 Statement of the Problem

1.3Objectives of the Study

1.4Research Questions

1.5Statement of Hypothesis

1.6 Significance of Study

1.7 Scope of the study

1.8 Justification of the Study

1.9 Methodology

1.10Definition of key Terms used in the study

1.11 Organization of Chapters

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

2.0 Introduction

2.1 Conceptual Clarifications of Insurgency

2.2 Boko Haram Attacks in Nigeria (2009-February 2015)

2.3 Boko Haram Insurgency and Its Implications on Nation’s Economy

2.4 Development, Security and Poverty

2.5 Theoretical Framework

2.6 Summary of Chapter

CHAPTER THREE: IMPACT OF BOKO-HARAM ON ECONOMY OF KADUNA METROPOLIS: A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

CHAPTER FOUR

Insurgency and Nigerian Economy

4.1 Introduction

4.2 Drastic plummeting of Foreign Direct Investment-FDI

4.3 Data Presentation and analysis

4.3 Test of Research Hypotheses

4.4 Discussion of the Findings

CHAPTHER FIVE

SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

5.1 Introduction

5.2 Summary

5.3 Conclusion

5.4 Recommendations

Bibliography

Appendices: Questionnaire

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION

1.0 Background to the Study

Nigeria is a multi-ethnic and a multi-religious state with a population of about 160 million people cutting across the divides of ethnicity and religious beliefs. Comprising 36 states, a federal capital territory (FCT) and 774 local government councils, it is a complex, multi-religious and multi-ethnic nation state according to (Oyeniyi 2012). The complexity of Nigeria as a nation state is centred on its political formation, economic, social and religious inclinations.

As a nation state, the country since independence has experienced several ethnic and religious crisis of various degrees and magnitude (Gilbert, 2013). Grappling with such political and economically motivated crises, successive administrations in Nigeria have been criticized by either the Muslim or Christian faithfuls when they are not favoured.

The current Boko Haram insurgency in the North-east geopolitical zone of Nigeria that originally took the form of sectarian religious violence has escalated into terrorist activities with international linkages and affiliations making it a relatively difficult nut for the Nigerian government to crack (Gilbert, 2014). Consequently, Nigeria has not known peace for about four years now.

The emergence of the fundamentalist Islamic sect, has led to the flight for safety and security of most Nigerians residing in the North East, especially Christians. Since the commencement of the terrorist operations of the sect, they have adopted several methods to unleash terror on the people. And most states of Northern Nigeria have experienced their dastardly activities, but the worst hit has been Adamawa, Bauchi, Bornu, FCT (Abuja), Kaduna, Kano, Plateau and Yobe (Nwakaudu, 2012:5).

According to Agomuo (2011:48) what started around 2009 in the far flung North East geopolitical zone of the country as a child’s play, has become a national disgrace and of international concern. The emergence of the deadly group, whose activities assumed a worrisome dimension in 2009, has continued a reign of terror in parts of the country.

The inhuman activities of the Islamist sect, have unsettled the Nigerian nation to the extent that ample time and socio-economic cum political resources that ought to have been channeled to the development of the entire country is being wasted on various efforts geared towards checkmating and possibly, annihilating the insurgency in the North East geopolitical zone of Nigeria.

Agreed that the North-east is the epicentre of the insurgency but its effect reverberates through the entire country and has constituted a major source of economic underdevelopment to Nigeria. It is against this backdrop that this thesis seeks to critically appraise the impact of Boko Haram insurgency on the on the social-economic life of Nigerians and recommend ways forward.

1.1 The Boko Haram Insurgency

The insurgency is not the first major group attacks or militancy attacks that have faced the Nigerian state. Different sects or groups had arisen in Nigeria with little or real militancy approach in prosecuting their different objectives. Amongst them were: the Maitatsine Islamic fundamentalist sect in North-east and North-west Nigeria, Odua People’s Congress (OPC) from the Yoruba ethnicity in South-west Nigeria, Bakassi Boys and Movement for the Actualization of Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) from the Igbo ethnic group in South-east Nigeria and the Niger Delta militants from the minority ethnicities in South-south Nigeria. The activities of Boko Haram pre-dates 2011 general elections, because there are the generations of people that have been engaging in different political, religious and ethnically-motivated crises in Northern part of Nigeria (Aro, 2013).

It is on record that Boko Haram has been operating under the name Shabaab Muslim Youth Organization with Mallam Lawal as the leader since 1995 but leadership of the group shifted to Mallam Mohammed Yusuf when Mallam Lawal left Nigeria to continue his education in Saudi Arabia (Ekanem and Ejue, 2012). It is the leadership of Mallam Mohammed Yusuf that allegedly opened the group to political influence and popularity. By implication, therefore, Mallam Mohammed Yusuf is the one that officially founded Boko Haram in 2002 in the city of Maiduguri with the aim of establishing Sharia government in Borno and neighbouring states (Gilbert, 2014).

Boko Haram grew out of a group of radical Islamist youth who worshipped at the Al-Haji Muhammadu Ndimi Mosque in Maiduguri, capital of Borno state, in the 1990’s (Walker 2012). Its leader, Mohammed Yusuf, began as a preacher and leader in the youth wing of Shababul Islam of Ahl-Sunnah, a Salafi group.

His literal interpretation of the Quran led him to advocate that aspects of western education he considered in contradiction to that holy book, such as evolution, the big bang theory of the universe development and elements of chemistry and geography should be forbidden, in Hausa (NIPPS, 2012 as cited by CGAR, 2014). While critical of the government, Yusuf was involved in official efforts to introduce and implement Sharia in several northern states in the 2000s. The failure to achieve this fully helps to explain Muslim youths’ anger with government deception and insincerity and the call for an authentic Islamist revolution (CGAR, 2014).

Boko Haram’s principal goal is to create a strict Islamic state in the north that it believes would address the ills of society, including corruption and bad governance. The sects core beliefs are strict adherence to the Quran and the Hadith (sayings of prophet Muhammed), and their interpretation as sanctioned by Ibn Taymiyyah.

Abu Qaqa, the group’s best known spokesman, explained that the group’s agenda is to destabilize Nigeria and take her back to the pre-colonial period when the Sharia law was practiced (CGAR, 2014). In the early stages, the Boko Haram sect was widely known to have mobilized its membership from women and children, school dropouts and unemployed university and polytechnic graduates, most of who tore their certificates.

The rationalization is that unemployment, underdevelopment and the general hopelessness pervading the society was caused by government which imposed western education on them and failed to manage the resources of the country to their benefits. Therefore, “western education is sin”; and this is the literal interpretation of Boko Haram in Hausa Language (Gilbert, 2014: 151). Although from the outset the sect’s mission was to impose Sharia on Nigeria, the leadership went about its preaching and interpretation of the Quran as a recipe for violence and an affront to constituted authority (Anyadike, 2013).

Serious concerns over its violent tendencies grew only after the death of Yussuf while in police custody, as well as his father in-law and sect financier, Ustaz Buji Foi, and the incarceration of members by state authorities. It is pertinent to note that Yussuf adopted a non-violent approach in his campaign but hoped to achieve his objectives through constant preaching in Mosque and forming alliances with politicians especially Sherrif Lawal. It cannot be ruled out that there were attacks during the leadership of Yussuf but most of the attacks were mild compared to the well-coordinated virulent terroristic attacks after his death.

Although Yussuf allegedly drew inspiration from radical Islamist, Ibn Taymiyya, he reportedly resisted some of his follower’s relentless campaign for the outright rejection of secularism and the use of violence as the major instrumentality for the achievement of their objective.

Against this backdrop, BBC online, June 22, 2012, opined that the sect’s current level of radicalization and terrorism is perhaps, a function of the death of its initial leadership and the subsequent clampdown by the state of the taciturn psychopath, Abubakar Shekau a Kanuri native who once boasted “I enjoy killing any one that Allah commands me to kill-the way I enjoy killing chickens and rams”.

Gilbert (2014: 152) posited that the new leadership turned to the use of lethal weapons such as: rocket propelled grenades (RPGs), anti-tank missiles, Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), surface-to-air missiles, armoured tanks, A-K 47 assault rifles, as well as machetes and daggers for the purpose of meting out mayhem to the Nigerian state, which have adversely affected her economy considering the high rate of loss of lives and properties.

Furthermore, the fact that the northern politics and the alliances formed between politicians especially in Bornu and Yobe states with the late Boko Haram leader Yussuf and the failure of the political leaders to honour agreements reached, implanted the violent approach adopted by the group.

There were attacks and counter attacks by political supporters in the sect which gradually resulted to divisions within the sect. Furthermore, the killing of Yussuf by the police and the alleged counter attacks by the Boko Haram groups was a long awaited opportunity by those opposed to the non-violent approach by Yussuf such as Abubakar Shekua, Abubakar Adam Kambar and Khalid al-Barnami to use their proposed violent approach to achieve their objectives.

The death of Yussuf gave rise to different violent sect groups who constructed a “state within a state” with a cabinet, its own religious police, and a larger farm, and attracted more and more people under its roof by the offering welfare handouts, food and shelter. Most of those attracted by the group were refugees from the wars over border in Chad and jobless Nigerian youths domiciled in Northern Nigeria. Its funding at this level of operation came from wealthy businessmen and politicians within and outside Nigeria.

It is pertinent to state unequivocally that the Boko Haram sect under the leadership of Yussuf and Abubakar Shekau took advantage of the failure of the Nigerian government at all levels in the north (Local, State and Federal government) to provide basic welfare schemes to criticize western education and drum up support for their false Islamic teachings. They thus exploited the lacuna created by the high unemployment level, non-availability of basic infrastructure and the general high poverty level in the area to their benefit through the deliberate strategy of providing some welfare packages to the citizenry.

Consequently, they used food, money and employment to attract youths to their fold and created the impression that their fundamentalist Islamic viewpoint of societal organization is better and more profitable than the western capitalist mode of production. Eventually, they succeeded in garnering support from the youths whom they recruited as suicide bombers and fighters under the leadership of Shekau who took over after the untimely death of Yussuf in police custody in 2009. And it was this second phase of violent attacks by Boko Haram that have increased developmental & socio-economic challenges in Kaduna.

Indeed, Boko-Haram insurgency has had negative impact on the socio-economic activities in Kaduna metropolis, it caused traders and residents injury and pain. It brought them hunger and unleashed untold hardship on the people. The socio-economy is bleeding as numbers of southerners have to fled back to the south for the safety of their life. Also, it brought division amongst the people, fueling animosities amongst adherents of Islamic and Christain religions. So sad. So unfortunate. Boko-Haram insurgency is our common enemy, herein lays the focus of this study.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

In view of economic hardship facing the country and reluctance of foreign investors to invest in Nigerian economy (most especially in the North) base on the prevailing insecurity and insurgency rocking this part of the country, which has led to closure or abandonment of peoples business activities within this region. It has also led to immigration of people from the north to south as well as led to reduction of patronage of products from northern region because of rumour that Boko Haram strategists are planning to send poisonous products to other parts of the country, (Aro, 2013:2).

Also, the insurgency of Boko Haram has reduced drastically government developmental projects, investment and growth in private business initiatives in the affected places. No wonder 2011 world investment report of the United Nations Conference on Trade Development reported that lull in business activities caused by insecurity in Kano and Kaduna alone has cost the Nigerian economy N1.3 trillion ( 6 billion dollars) as a result of attacks by Boko Haram group, (Aro, 2011).

Furthermore, Boko Haram insurgency has discouraged Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Nigeria. Investors all over the world are afraid of coming to do business in Nigeria. Countries on daily basis warn their citizens to stay off Nigeria and north in particular. This is a very bad signal to economic growth and development.

In Kaduna, the socio-economic life has become tougher as people find it very difficulty to earn a living. For instance, the poverty rate in Kaduna before the emergence of Boko-Haram is 42% and rise to 55% in 2014 December, (Employment Survey, 2014). Like wise, customer’s patronage in business and trade has also reduced by 30%, (Bureau of Statistics Kaduna 2015). Thus, this above scenario necessitated the objectives of the study and research questions.

1.3   Objectives of the Study                                                           

The main objective of the study is to ascertain the impact of insurgency on Nigerian economy. Other specifics objectives are;

1. to investigate into the remote and immediate causes of insurgency in Northern Nigeria
2. to analyse the impact of insurgency in nation’s economy and Kaduna in particular
3. to propose policy recommendations and solutions for way forward

1.4Research Questions       

The study intended to answer the following questions:

1. What are the remote and immediate causes of insurgency in Nigeria?
2. What are the impact of insurgency in nation’s economy and Kaduna in particular?
3. What policy recommendations could best providing lasting solutions to the problem of insurgency in Nigeria?

1.5   Statement of Hypothesis                                               

The following hypothesis was formulated for this study. It will be tested using the data generated from the opinion survey of the target respondents:

H₀: The activities of Boko-Haram insurgency has impact on Nigeria’^s economy

H₁: The activities of Boko-Haram insurgency has impact on Nigeria’^s economy

1.6   Significance of Study    

The study is significant in many ways. One of the significance of this study is that the results will reveal the security lapses in the country and its impact on the nation’s economy. Another significance of the study is that, it will proffer recommendations to the perennial insecurity that the country face.

Also, this study will broaden the knowledge of the researcher and as well contribute to the existing literature on the subject matter. Additionally, it will be an invaluable tool for students, academia, institutions and individuals that might want to know more about the subject matter for further discovering.

1.7   Scope of the study                            

This study focuses on the appraisal of the impact of insecurity on Nigerian economy with particular focus on Kaduna Metropolis 2009-2015. The study will however discuss the relationship between security and economic growth and threat challenge of insecurity to the nation’s economy.

1.8 Justification of the Study

Insurgency generally has never done well to any society. The properties and live lost since 2009-2015 cannot be overemphasized. Thus, the study was conducted to identify the factors that influence the insurgency and its impact as well on Nigerian economy with particular focus on Kaduna and proffer solutions.

1.9 Methodology

The methodology described how the researcher intends to collect and gather data from the respondents. For the purpose of this study, survey research design will be used.

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